


my faraway friend

by lunati0ns



Category: Spiritfarer (Video Game)
Genre: Drabbles, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mostly Dialogue, Spoilers for Atul's departure, anyone else in this thread cry about their frog uncle at night, rated teen for one (1) swear word, stella deserves to monologue, very sad young woman yells at constellation, wish i could also get a hug from my lynx grandma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:02:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28449615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunati0ns/pseuds/lunati0ns
Summary: Perched on the highest point of her boat’s structures, Stella still has to crane her neck to stare up and up into the dark sky, at the irrevocable shape of her Atul's face carved into the stars, and understand.Her voice is choked when she says, shattered, "Oh." Her heart lost in an overwhelming tide of too many emotions to name, whatever gleaming hope she had of seeing him again extinguished by a sea of sudden and all encompassing grief. "Hello, uncle."***After Atul disappears, Stella visits the Everdoor's waters in an attempt to find him. And she does.Just not in the way she wanted.
Relationships: Astrid & Stella (Spiritfarer), Atul & Stella (Spiritfarer)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 32





	my faraway friend

**Author's Note:**

> me: yknow how atul left was fucked up but i still think other characters departures affected me more  
> me three days later still laying awake at night crying while thinking about how Atul just LEAVES you without SAYING GOODBYE: hm. wait a second
> 
> there is nothing more heartbreaking than going to the everdoor after atul disappears and noticing his constellation in the sky there for the first time and that is a FACT.

Atul disappeared without a trace. 

For such a bombastic and loud man, his leaving was so eerily silent. Here one night and gone the next without so much as a note. 

Stella searched the whole sea for him, stopped at every single island to check if he was there. Certain that this would be just like how it was with Gwen, if she just looked hard enough, threw her entire self into her search, it’d bear fruit. 

(The whole time ignoring the white lily blooming behind the glass of his sleeping tank inside his workshop. It didn’t matter what that meant. She would find him. She had to.) 

The Everdoor is the very last place she checks. And when she gets there--

Perched on the highest point of her boat’s structures, Stella still has to crane her neck to stare up and up into the dark sky, at the irrevocable shape of her Atul's face carved into the stars, and understand. 

The Spiritfarer's voice is choked when she says, shattered, "Oh." Her heart lost in an overwhelming tide of too many emotions to name, whatever gleaming hope she had of seeing him again extinguished by a sea of sudden and all-encompassing grief. "Hello, uncle." 

There the chubby, jovial face that she's been looking for for so long is, stamped bright against the sky right beside the souls of the rest of her precious lost friends. It's right next to Alice's and a bit above Summer’s. 

He went through the Everdoor. He passed on.

He didn’t say goodbye. 

They didn’t do-- the-- she doesn’t even know what to call it. It’s too informal and intimate to be called a ceremony. There was no procedure for it, no procedure for _anything_ she did, as new and strange everything was to her. It's their final farewell, how it always went, with Gwen, with Summer, with Alice and Giovanni. When her friends were about to leave her, they poured everything their hearts had to offer into her carefully cupped hands. They let themselves be cared for and heard in their last moments. They allowed her to hold them close before they were gone from her forever.

Atul didn’t. Was that what he was trying to do with the family dinner? The happy memory tastes like ash in her mouth, now, because that wasn’t _right,_ not how it’s supposed to be, and he’s gone, gone, gone, didn’t say goodbye, and she didn’t get to see him off and know he was safe and would be happy, or to reassure him that all would be well once he was on the other side if he was scared or unsure, and she _failed_ in fulfilling her only purpose in this realm. 

She failed her Atul.

She has to say something. Do something, to make up for it. But when she opens her mouth, only a guttural sob comes out, a wretched, agonized noise that she claps her hand over her mouth to muffle, because it’s late, and despite the brightness of this part of the sea, the rest of her dear passengers are still asleep and she can’t wake them up.

She doesn’t know what to do. Where to start. 

Stella takes a deep breath, centers herself just like Summer taught her, and begins anyways, gaze once again risen to the sky.

“Uncle, you..." She swallows, hard. "You left.”

Daffodil mrrows at her, curled in her lap with his head against her chest. She’s _sitting_ on the roof, she realizes, but she doesn’t remember when that happened. She was standing when she first said hello. Her legs had buckled beneath her somewhere between then and now.

Her cat meows again, paws at the front of her shirt while looking up at her with mournful blue eyes. Stella takes her hand from her mouth to run trembling fingers through his downy white fur without looking down. “You didn’t say goodbye.” 

“I didn’t… I didn’t get to say goodbye to you the first time, either. When we were both alive, and you disappeared. I shouldn’t be surprised.” She doesn’t know what she’s saying. This isn’t the sort of thing anyone had said when they were speaking at what was basically their own funerals, but the words keep coming, “But I guess I-- I just thought that you had gotten into an accident or something. That maybe you’d gotten lost, or in trouble, just that something out of your control was keeping you from coming home to us. Had stolen you away.”

  
“I didn’t think--” and Stella has to stop petting Daffodil now, because she needs to dig her nails so deep into her palms that she’d draw blood if she had any at all in this dead form. “I didn’t think you’d leave me on purpose.”

“With everyone else, I got the chance to... to say it. And it-- don’t get me wrong, it hurt, but at least then I got-- closure. I could… We held each other's hands and helped close the chapter of our lives with the other in it. I knew where they would go and when it would happen, and I'd help them there. But with you, I went to sleep thinking you’d be beside me the next morning, and then you weren’t, and there wasn’t anything I could do.”

“I wish I could have hugged you before you went and known it was the last time I’d ever get to. I would’ve held you tighter. Longer. I would’ve told you I loved you.” 

“...Did you know I love you, uncle?”

“I’m worried that you didn’t, that my heart didn’t reach you, and that’s why you left. I-I knew you were having trouble. Struggling. That you missed your family, your real one, and that you were tired. You tried so hard to hide it and smile for me and I loved you for it but I could tell, and I was so worried. I thought I was doing my best to be there for you but maybe it wasn’t enough. I know you were always telling me to take breaks and enjoy my life, but-- but I would have worked harder, taken more time for you and less for me, if you asked me to. I wish you asked me to.” 

“Uncle,” she says, clipped, to the sprawling sky that doesn’t talk back, doesn’t laugh at its own bad jokes or ask when dinner is coming with a wide froggy smile or tell her about new woodworking projects or say _sorry, sprout,_ with a voice that inexplicably reminds of her of bubbles rising through a water's surface, and finally comes upon a name for the emotion smoldering in her so hot that she can feel it in her bones. “I think I am angry at you.”

“You went through the Everdoor on your own and I don’t understand why. You said we're family, but what kind of family abandons each other like that? I never abandoned you.” She can feel the hot sting of accusation eating through her ribs, burning up her throat and tainting her words. “Maybe-- Maybe you thought you were a burden. That I was too busy to take the time to care about you. Maybe you wanted me to forget you, a-as if I ever could.” 

“But if you did, you could’ve _talked_ to me, uncle. And I would’ve told you how much you mean to me and how honored I would be to take you where you needed to go when you were ready. But you didn’t, and now I’ll _never_ f-fucking know what you were thinking, because you decided by yourself what was best and made things so much _harder_ for you and for me, and you _a-abandoned me,_ and I wasn’t _ready_ for you to _\--_!” 

And Stella cuts herself off, then, bites down on her own tongue and shudders with her face in her hands instead of surrendering to the keening wail trying to rip itself out of her throat. 

She inhales. Exhales. Gets herself back under control. She can’t talk so loudly. Everyone is still asleep. 

“I’m sorry,” she says to the sea once she’s calm enough, the palms of her hands shoved into her eyes to try and wrestle the tears down. Her voice is quieted with suffocating shame, her words drowned, blown away on the ocean wind and lost among the sound of gently turning red waves as she offers this quiet, unfitting, _useless_ requiem to the stars. Stella feels like a lost child. Alone in the dark and so, so small. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that, I’m not mad at you. That was selfish. You deserved to decide however you wanted to go. All I’m here to do is make sure you’re comfortable enough to move on, and you did, so it doesn’t matter how I f-feel about...” 

“Stella,” a voice, a rumble so low it resembles a purr, comes from behind her. 

A gasp tears into her lungs and tangles with the strangled sob that’s on its way out. Stella chokes and turns to meet Astrid’s level gaze, then immediately looks away when she remembers the state of herself.

“Oh!” Stella says, forcing a smile to inject false cheer into her voice as she quickly pulls the star-shaped brim of her hat down over her red eyes. She puts her back to the lynx and tries to discreetly scrub the tears off her cheeks. “I didn’t know you were awake! Do you need something? A-Are you hungry?” 

There is silence. Then, a deep, pained sigh. 

Stella feels Astrid pad up to stand behind her, then sit down, so close that the Spiritfarer can feel her fur brush against her back. Huge paws come down from either side to wrap around her middle and pull her into her pillowy chest and Stella, her whole stiff body a line of hurt, does not resist, until she’s been bundled into Astrid’s lap like she really is a child again.

“He left you,” Astrid says, resting her chin on the top of her head. This close, Stella can feel her voice rumbling through her throat, like a warm thunderstorm. How much did she hear? “And I am so, so sorry.” 

_Don’t,_ she wants to say, but all she can do is whimper and sniffle, grief muzzling her. He left her. He _left_ her, and she wasn't ready for him to go. 

“You’re allowed to feel however you do about it, Munchkin.” Astrid slowly rocks her body from side to side alongside the rocking of the boat, her arm’s as safe and comforting as her childhood cradle, and Stella’s face crumples like wet paper. “You’re allowed to be sad. Hurt, or angry. No matter what, I’ll be here to hold you. I promise.” 

There isn’t anything else to do. 

Stella wails.

  
  
Her heartbreak taking shape in a long and mournful sound that the whole ship, the whole sea, the whole sky, can hear, she finally allows herself to cry, curled into as small a ball as she can make herself in Astrid's careful, steady hold. _Goodbye,_ she thinks, and allows herself to be held, utterly overwhelmed by her sorrow as the stars twinkle above their heads. _Goodbye, uncle._

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in two hours at 1 a.m. because i am deeply in my feelings and now i’m posting it with little to no editing time. If you’re reading this and you haven’t read spiritfarer please play it


End file.
